david_feindel

Mike: Never even needed to clean the sensor. It takes pictures fine. Nikon didn't provide an actual quote to repair it. But I've heard that they categorically refuse to repair any saltwater immersion and are almost as reluctant to repair fresh water immersion. Their refusal didn't surprise me in the least. Yes, the body impacted a rock on the way down. There's a chip in the plastic housing around the viewfinder about the size of a grain of rice, and an abrasion mark on the u-shaped piece of metal mounting bracket that holds a flash right above the now exposed PCB. But no physical signs of damage otherwise. Thanks to all for your comments!

My camera and I tripped and fell into a freshwater lake (6-8" deep), and were partially submerged for 5-10 seconds. Immediately turned it off and pulled the battery and memory cards, and blotted the exterior dry. Had it in a bag with desiccant within 90 minutes. It stayed in the bag for 5 days, recharging the desiccant 3 times. It still didn't work, so I sent it off to Nikon Service, again in a bag with fresh desiccant. They returned the camera to me in 2 weeks un-repaired, saying it would cost as much to repair as to buy a new unit. But the camera now (mostly) works. The left half of the upper LCD display doesn't work, and the shoe for the flash is missing a spring clip, exposing a very small PCB. Everything else seems to work as it should. I can easily live with these parts not working on a backup camera body. The question is whether the damage will grow over time, or pretty much stay limited to what it is now? I don't do any professional work, but frequently go on photo trips to places with challenging environments (high humidity, heat, cold, rain/snow, salty air/spray, etc.). I've already committed to buying another Z8 as my primary camera (gulp!). It won't cost me anything to start using this body as my backup, but what should my expectations be as to how long it could survive as my backup body?

Andrew--can you please pass on the 2nd 19mm tilt-shift lens you receive to me? :) Rodeo--I rented a Nikon 19mm T/S lens for my trip to Glacier/Waterton Lakes NPs last year. That lens is, IMHO, the sharpest, most color-free wide angle lens I have ever used. Using it with my D800e on a sturdy tripod, the corners were noticeably sharper than even my 20mm prime. I looked for, but never saw, any chromatic aberration in my images even when pixel peeping. The fact that it can tilt and shift in any orientation is also a plus over prior Nikon T/S lenses. Now if I could just find $3000 in loose change in my couch or under the car seat so I could buy one...

I bought that AF-S 300/4 used, and wound up replacing the motor in it after a couple of years of use. Yes, it started to squeak, and slowly got worse. Wound up having APS in Chicago fix it, for about $400 as I recall. That fix lasted until I sold it a few years ago. Mine had a s/n in the 7000s as I recall, so it had to be one of the first. Taking it to photograph elephant seals on windy sandy beaches multiple times didn't help in the longevity. My two cents--stay away, unless its priced low enough that you can regard it as a throw-away lens. On the other hand, what great optics! It clearly punched above its weight in that regard.

We did our first trip to Yellowstone+Grand Teton last fall, using an all-inclusive photo trip plus 5 days on our own. So no direct experience with any of the companies on your list. But I'm sure any of them would tailor their activities to the fitness level of their clients--that's just good business practice for them. Both parks are at 5000 feet elevation or higher, so that factors into the equation as well. Having said that, almost all of the areas of interest are pretty flat (Mammoth Hot Springs being one notable exception). My wife and I are both in our mid-60s, and we didn't have any problems. Be prepared to be amazed and awe-struck. You'll likely find that you will spend more time stopped taking photographs than walking. Minimizing the weight of gear to carry is a consideration, but I'm betting you'll be working out of a vehicle most of the time, so its not like you have to carry everything all the time. You'll want a good wide-angle lens for landscapes, but a good long telephoto (>300mm) is a necessity if you're looking for wildlife. Bison you'll get closeups with your 35mm lens; just about everything else (birds, pronghorns, elk, etc.) will need 300mm+. I rented a 500mm f/4 lens (8 lbs) and another 6 lbs for the tripod to hold it and got some spectacular wildlife photos. I never had to carry it more than 100 yards from our vehicle, and most of the time, considerably less than that. I second someone's suggestion to get some practice/training in ahead of time. Enjoy!

One other thought. Aren't printer heads user-replaceable on Canon fine art printers? On Epsons, thats a $300-$500 factory-only repair, but I *thought* on Canons, its a $75 user-replaceable part. But I confess I haven't actually priced it out.

Good question. I was actually taught this technique in a fine art printing class I took by Stephen Johnson. It worked fine on the Epson printers we had in the class (3800s as I recall), and it works fine on my Epson P600, with one very big limitation. My P600 will print multiple times (usually 3) on papers up to about 250gsm, but struggles or even refuses to feed papers heavier than that more than once. The problem is more likely tied to paper thickness than paper weight, but I don't remember the actual thicknesses. Be sure to note what changes you made for each print; otherwise after a few iterations, you will get them confused and then can't go back. (keeping virtual copies in LR or separate saved files would fix this). This technique is especially useful in sorting out color casts to b&w prints. Let us know your results

Swimming Crab at Monterey Bay Aquarium's Baja exhibit

Cooper's Hawk in CA

California Quail (I believe a juvenile)

There's one other concern I have with the poster's question....leaving a shutter open for 30 minutes with a bright sun in the image. That might cause physical damage to the sensor or other camera electronics. You'll certainly get *a lot* of saturated pixels. But I'm not an engineer to know that for a fact.

Juvenile white-tailed kite

In LR, with the soft proof box checked, proper paper and printer profile chosen, simulate paper & ink turned on, and show gamut warning turned on, everything still looks pretty good (though not as good as w/ soft proofing turned off). It shows 5-6 tiny black areas out of gamut, but those are all in the foreground on the right of the photo (see attached). Looking at it in PS, with custom proof conditions set to proper printer/paper device, black point compensation checked, and simulate paper color checked (simulate black ink can't be checked), the screen image looks much closer to what came out of the printer--muddy and "blobby". The screen image turns absolutely ugly if black point compensation is unchecked. The area of concern is the entire hillside in shadow to the left of the bridge. So a new puzzling item is why is soft proofing so different between the two programs? I printed in from LR; this example suggests I should be at least doing soft printing in PS instead....

I'm trying to print my own version of the classic Bixby Bridge shot, and can't get the large areas in dark shadow to print well. They are muddy, blob-like dark on the print. Everything looks very good on my monitor (calibrated NEC PA, btw). All the other tonal ranges on the print are sharp and match the color on my monitor. I'm printing on Hahnemuhle PhotoRag Satin, using a P600 printer, and Hahnemuhle's ICC profile. LR has the colors in these dark areas in the ~3-10% range for the RGB channels (in the PS info panel, they show as ~3-30 for each of the channels). Am I just trying to get too much contrast out of this paper? If so, is there a rule of thumb to follow as to the minimum levels you can print and see detail? Is there a way to set warnings in either LR or PS for this condition? Thanks in advance for any help.

I, too, was looking to upgrade my Dell desktop running Windows7 a year ago. Took digitaldog's advice and bought a NEC PA272 with Spectravision. Wonderful monitor. I refuse to do any serious photo editing without it; its that good. Then invested in a SSD, which provided the speed I wanted (boot time went from ~2 minutes to 10 seconds as an example). Then found a used Nvidia Quadro K2000 graphics card that provided 10-bit color and perhaps a bit more speed on the more math intensive PS and LR tasks. Not sure how much a $400 current technology graphics card would help; according to Adobe, there's only a limited number of functions in PS/LR that invoke the graphics processor to gain speed. The K series cards provided a huge improvement in lower power consumption and smaller size than their previous generation cards. Plus, it was smaller and less power hungry than the OEM graphics card it replaced. Zero issues with compatibility as well. Hope this helps.